Lobbying front organisations for AT&T, Charter, Comcast, Frontier and mobile carriers joined forces to mount another legal challenge to California’s new network neutrality law on Wednesday. The four are the American Cable Association (ACA), the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association (CTIA), the National Cable Television Association (NCTA) and the U.S. Telephone Association (USTelecom) – they keep trying to rebrand themselves, but that’s what the initials originally stood for, and what they’re really about.

They filed a complaint and motion for an injunction in a Sacramento federal court, claiming that the network neutrality law – senate bill 822 – signed by governor Jerry Brown on Sunday is “a classic example of unconstitutional state regulation”. Because the Internet does not stop (or start) at California’s borders, it is inherently an interstate service, their argument goes. So, they say, the Federal Communications Commission’s most recent net neutrality decision overrides California law…

The 2018 Order expressly “preempt[s] any state or local measures that would effectively impose rules or requirements that [the FCC has] repealed or decided to refrain from imposing in this order or that would impose more stringent requirements for any aspect of broadband service” addressed in the 2018 Order.

SB–822 plainly falls within the scope of this express preemption provision. It is a state measure that seeks to reinstate net neutrality requirements that the 2018 Order repealed.

The lobbyists’ challenge follows a similar filing by the federal justice department on Sunday evening. It’s likely that the two cases will be combined, but for now the Trump administration’s challenge is taking the lead. It’s assigned to judge John Mendez, who scheduled the first hearing in the case for 14 November 2018.

California’s defence is led by attorney general Xavier Becerra, who has aggressively gone after high profile Trump administration policies, but also takes money from AT&T, Comcast and Charter. His response to their lawsuit was to tweet that it “was brought by power brokers who have an obvious financial interest in maintaining their stronghold on the public’s access to online content”. We’ll get a look at how he intends to do that in a couple of weeks, when his first response is due.